Made in Nigeria

The Spark | Ignite / Connect / Achieve
www.thesparkng.com
SPECIAL FEATURE
The Grand Gymnasia
i-fitness
iFitness is one brand you can’t ignore if
health is your wealth
Inspiration
Cause and effect - two words that matter, especially as they
make you understand how one comes up with an idea and turns
that idea into reality. Sometimes, it is a need to solve a lingering
problem; there are other reasons. For Folusho Ogunwale, iFitness
“was born out of the need to provide a solution to two problems:
non-availability of convenient/decent fitness centres and the loss
of a friend’s younger brother to a heart condition and diabetes.
These two gave me a sense of mission.”
He continues: “You know, living in Lagos comes with its own dose
of stress; the last thing you want to do is to add to that daily dose
of stress in the name of getting fit. While I pondered on solving
this problem, I realised that creating a decent and convenient
chain of fitness centers spread around every city in Nigeria would
mean that we are solving a bigger problem - that is; improving the
health and wellness of thousands and possibly millions of people
through our centres.”
Initial Challenges
Tell us if you started on a smooth ride and continued with a
silver spoon, let’s understand if this happened in paradise or not.
Folusho says infrastructure was his initial challenge, but “funding
for start ups weren’t new to me. It has become our reality around
here to provide everything for our businesses from boreholes,
generators to even transformers to ensure steady power supply
etc.”
But he tells us that he encountered a bigger challenge: “the fitness
industry is young, in fact, non-existent about 10 years back.” Then
the question arose as to if Nigerians were ready to add ‘fitness’
into their daily routines. “Were people going to embrace fitness
if we start-off our fitness chain? Was the market deep enough
for the investment we were making? Where would we get skilled
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fli @thesparkng